posted at 4:03 pm on April 5, 2012 by John Hawkins

The ill will many Greeks feel toward Germany for imposing painful financial conditions on the massive loans the country made to them are just a normal response to a difficult situation, says German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

…It’s understandable that Greeks were upset with Germany says Schaeuble. “When you have countries or people who have been living beyond their means, and now they have to apply some austerity, they have to make cuts, they have to reform their labor market…people tend to push the blame to others,” Schaeuble says. “They are looking for scapegoats. It’s perfectly normal,” he tells Kroft.

To make matters worse, Greeks still remember the German occupation of their country in World War II and have made protest posters featuring Swastikas that allude to German domination. The posters sometimes have German leaders on them, even Schaeuble. “That’s part of politics,” says the finance minister, who tells Kroft he is just trying to do his job and Germany doesn’t want to dominate anyone. He too, remembers World War II. “It doesn’t mean we want to dominate anybody. Germany tried to do so in the past and it never worked, but it no longer wants to do so today.”

On the one hand, this is like a bum complaining because someone giving him a twenty wants it spent on food instead of Wild Turkey. If the Greeks could actually manage their own affairs without outside help, they wouldn’t need any money from Germany in the first place. On the other hand, as an American, it’s actually perversely gratifying to see another country being demonized for aiding a hapless nation in trouble. It’s almost like a voice from the cosmos shouting, “Oh, it’s not just you. The world is actually full of ungrateful cretins who don’t appreciate anything.”

The really scary thing here is that this should clue you in on how far the Left IN THIS COUNTRY will go to avoid cutting spending. Greece is so broke that it’s having to live on donations from more financially responsible nations, something we’re too big to do, and the Greeks are STILL demonizing the people that are paying their bills and resisting attempts to cut spending. Doesn’t reading this leave you with the feeling that one day, even though our credit rating has been slashed to Zimbabwe levels and the country looks like The Grapes of Wrath 2020, we’ll still have Democrats screaming about tax cuts for the rich and demanding that we increase the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts?

Blowback

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Doesn’t reading this leave you with the feeling that one day, even though our credit rating has been slashed to Zimbabwe levels and the country looks like The Grapes of Wrath 2020, we’ll still have Democrats screaming about tax cuts for the rich and demanding that we increase the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts?

We’re already there in some respects. Look at California which is broke as hell and their politicians are still sitting there debating over high speed rail which even the most partisan lefties are conceding is completely unaffordable and impractical. Look at DC where Harry Reid won’t even allow funding to be cut for cowboy poetry festivals in Nevada despite a $1.3 trillion annual deficit.

I don’t think there are too many Nazis still alive, and any that are aren’t likely to be pulling too many economic strings at this point. But then again, all whites in the US are guilty of being slave holders even though all slave holders have been dead a hundred years and the vast majority of whites even back then didn’t own slaves and many whites back then sacrificed their lives to free the slaves.

Germany would be smart to cut their losses now. Their great-great-great grandchildren will be called “Nazis” by the great-great-great grandchildren of today’s Greeks a hundred years from now unless they are willing to become providers/slaves of the Greek.

Had you managed your affairs better you could have controlled your own destiny. Too late now. Germany is finally conquoring Europe, without firing a shot. And the dumbass natives don’t much like it. Too bad, you idiots.

“When you have countries or people who have been living beyond their means, and now they have to apply some austerity, they have to make cuts, they have to reform their labor market…people tend to push the blame to others,”

“When you have countries or people who have been living beyond their means, and now they have to apply some austerity, they have to make cuts, they have to reform their labor market…people tend to push the blame to others,”

Default seems much, much better than the alternative….
Commandant frau merkel, in a further humiliation for Greece, has demanded that the Greeks turn over all their possessions to The Fatherland and then strip naked before entering the “showers.”
Clearly, old habits are hard to change.

The Greek people have figured out the big secret. The loans are being used to repay the big European banks (mostly German) while the debts are accruing to the Greek people. Not those who blew the money but those who have had their votes taken away. Same thing in Ireland, same thing in Italy.

Same thing here but more subtly – the currency is being debased and the debasement is being funneled to repair bank balance sheets. Our masters have simply been smooth about hiding it (so far).

Greece to Germany: Only Nazis would give us billions with strings attached

Handing people money always seems to be a way of breeding contempt.

itsspideyman on April 5, 2012 at 4:08 PM

Yep, big mistake.

forest on April 5, 2012 at 4:32 PM

Ayn Rand is looking less and less crazy to me every day.

A solid criticism of Atlas Shrugged is that the “villains” are two-dimensional and cartoon-like. It’s just that I keep seeing them in the real world — “looters,” down to the strange guilt-tripping — and the real people are actually sort of two-dimensional and cartoon-like.

To make matters worse, Greeks still remember the German occupation of their country in World War II and have made protest posters featuring Swastikas that allude to German domination.

Let Greece burn to the ground. Greeks are lazy people. They keep borrowing and borrowing. Where did they used the money? Unions, over one month of paid vacations, government officials. The country is pure corruption.

The Greek people have figured out the big secret. The loans are being used to repay the big European banks (mostly German) while the debts are accruing to the Greek people. Not those who blew the money but those who have had their votes taken away. Same thing in Ireland, same thing in Italy.

Same thing here but more subtly – the currency is being debased and the debasement is being funneled to repair bank balance sheets. Our masters have simply been smooth about hiding it (so far).

koparosti on April 5, 2012 at 5:22 PM

Don’t blame the banks. No one forced these lazy ass countries to borrow money from the banks. These countries borrowed from the banks to fund their socialist programs.

If they used the borrowed money to create wealth, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

“In the barrooms and TV talk shows of Germany, however, impatience with Europe and the euro is at a boiling point. The opinion pollster Renate Köcher of the Allensbach Institute found recently that in the course of 2011, the percentage of Germans uneasy about the eurozone rose from 38 percent to 55 percent. Whereas at the turn of last year voters opposed kicking any country out of the eurozone by a margin of 40 percent to 36 percent, by September they favored kicking out the biggest debtors by 46 percent to 29 percent.

The almost universal reaction of European leaders has been that the German people don’t know what they’re talking about, and many German politicians have paid lip service to the same idea. For Bosbach, this is a danger to democracy. “It may well be that people don’t understand every last detail about the Greek budget and the situation on the financial markets,” he says. “But they have a keen grasp of how successful the rescue measures are likely to be. And up till now, at any rate, the skeptics have been vindicated.”

I spoke about this democratic disconnect with Michael Fuchs, the deputy chair of Merkel’s party in the Bundes-tag, who is responsible for economics and the euro. He was sitting in his office near the Brandenburg Gate, preparing for a trip back to his constituency the following day, and he admitted his voters were getting restive. “We are growing far apart from our people,” he says. “I tell you, the questions I get are not really . . . convenient. Somebody will say to me, ‘Michael you’re a nice guy, but can you explain to me why I have to work until 67 and I get [as a pension] 46 percent of my final salary, while a Greek guy is retiring at 57 with 94 percent of his last salary?’ ” In the past two years, German journalists have coined the word Wutbürger—a rough translation might be “rageniks”—to describe such people.”

Leave the Germans alone! The Greeks should be thankful for the money they are recieving from Germany. But instead they want to complain because Germany, that is, the German taxpayer is financing the Greek “mess”. Of course Germany should demand rules if it is going to “give away” tons of money. Germany is the economic leader in the EU for a reason. If Greece wants some of their (Germany’s) money then you better believe there will be “financial constraints” attached. Without any constraints the money would just disappear and they would need more in the future…

The Greek people have figured out the big secret. The loans are being used to repay the big European banks (mostly German) while the debts are accruing to the Greek people. Not those who blew the money but those who have had their votes taken away. Same thing in Ireland, same thing in Italy.

Same thing here but more subtly – the currency is being debased and the debasement is being funneled to repair bank balance sheets. Our masters have simply been smooth about hiding it (so far).

koparosti on April 5, 2012 at 5:22 PM

Which Occupy camp are you in? Go play the drums and stop opining about how the banking system works. Someone forgot to tell the Greeks they were supposed to pay back the money with interest. Socialism killed the modern Greek civilization. The bill is way past due.

Clearly the solution is for Greece to default, the German and French banks that donated the money to get shafted, and for the EU to reorganized with that new reality in mind.

1. Many of the EU policies hurt greece over the years. greece said yes because they were getting paid. Let greece do what they want and stop paying them. Problem solved.

2. The whole Eurozone has to make it understood that interest rates for given countries are not going to be fixed at one big eurozone price. Every given country needs a different interest rate like the US states that each have different interest rates.

If you prefer I can rephrase it as “or even Israel”. As in, even a state where the population has plenty to complain of, historically, unlike the Greeks.

The point is, the Germans have to stop paying out on accusations, to anyone.

David Blue on April 5, 2012 at 7:03 PM

Accusations? There are still survivors of the Holocaust living in Israel, and Germany stopped paying Holocaust survivors years ago, see Israelis slam Germany on Holocaust reparations. It’s unfortunate that you chose to add Israel and the Jews in your comment because the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of a people, was very different than what the Greeks went through in WWII.

Doesn’t reading this leave you with the feeling that one day, even though our credit rating has been slashed to Zimbabwe levels and the country looks like The Grapes of Wrath 2020, we’ll still have Democrats screaming about tax cuts for the rich and demanding that we increase the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts?

Doesn’t reading this leave you with the feeling that one day, even though our credit rating has been slashed to Zimbabwe levels and the country looks like The Grapes of Wrath 2020, we’ll still have Democrats screaming about tax cuts for the rich and demanding that we increase the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts?

Exactly. This is why we need to stop seeking compromise with them. They have no interest in compromise. They want what they want, and they will always want what they want. We cannot compromise with them. We need to defeat them.